Movies like Wall-E have commented about our lack of physical interaction and our future to come. Scientific studies have proved that we are social creatures of the physical world, yet social media of the digital world has been changing what it means to socially interact. This with technology have been making it easier to tap in and out of the Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and what not and we can talk to these sites to talk to our friends via speech recognition forgetting that a simple phone call can get you an immediate response.

I admit that I am a texter because it ironically frees up my time as opposed to phone calls which i invest more of my time into. Besides our insane amount of time on the computer or texting, the latest subject of discussion that has been brought up is, “emoji overuse” as I prefer to call it.

I’ve also noticed that sites such as Facebook force emoji use whether or not you type a face or pick a face from a gallery of images.

This lovely article on Mashable discusses the the use of emoji through the years. I remember the days when they were called “emoticons” and the difference between emoticons and emoji’s being pixel versus a more rendered face. I personally find the emoji’s odd looking myself, but for they cutely convey expressions people are feeling.

Emoji’s are considered something used mostly by females and the younger generations. There have been surveys and studies saying the more emotional you are as a person the more likely you will use emojis to express those feelings in text, and the condensed faces are connected to young folk who simultaneously abbreviate their words as well.

Why Mashable and myself find this so concerning is because emojis are meant for light playful use in certain situations. But according the writer’s personal anecdote of using emjoi’s to express their sadness of their friend moving rather than calling their friend to talk personally.

This casual substitution brings a more stunning realization about blasé treatment of situations not meant to be taken lightly.

Our generation is coming out with these amazing technological revolutions such as Google Glass and smart watches that make communication easily accessible but a lot less personal.

Pinterest and Tumblr are considered curatorial social spaces, according to the NY Times, with the additional blog component for Tumblr. But after the Yahoo buyout of Tumblr, it’s following has become stagnant while Pinterest is coming up strong and predicted to soon rival Twitter in its amount of handlers. Social media has been around for decades but has only started trending now, which means out with the old blog spaces and in with the new real time one sentence life update.

Google is the leading data search engine with the ability to image search as well, but while Google has the literal answer for image keywords, Pinterest has the creative answer for users with aesthetics in mind.

The great thing about Tumblr is that it effectively combines a variety of image content under a number of tags that is seen worldwide, and with gaining a following they can choose to get to know you personally via opinion blogs and messages.

Forbes Magazine recently did a study on the top four networking applications ranking Facebook ($170 billion), Twitter ($23 billion in stock), and Linkdin ($20 billion) as the top three but Pinterest ($5 billion) is climbing fast in popularity. It’s estimated to go head to head with Twitterin the next year. Surveys say that many of the users are identified females, myself included, but it has no target gender, and male identified users are testing the waters more and more.

I recently became a Pinterest convert. I was previously a Tumblr addict adamantly resisting the fact that something new could be better than Tumblr.My partner recommended Pinterest to me because I missed the visual inspiration I got from Tumblr but without the time investment needed to search and sort in comparison to Tumblrand Google.

Pinterest brings to the table immediate satisfaction in all things visually pleasing to the eye, the interface allows for quicker browsing and more exploration in order to create personal mood boards in which others can view or you can choose to hide.

It’s an excellent time waster without the feeling of wasting time and its impersonal unlike a lot of other networking social media sites whose main focus is blogging to meet people.

I’ve been through many networking blogs from Xanga to Livejournal, to Myspace each with a target audience and it’s funny to see how they grow and decay leaving way for new social enterprises.

More and more people are falling into the social media craze and a lead captor is Instagram. Instagram is a mobile app that allows users to take photos or videos for the purpose of sharing their life online. It is now one of the top social platforms and businesses can use this to their advantage.

Instagram currently has more than 500 million users and steadily growing. What does this mean for marketers? That there is a huge platform of consumers waiting to be engaged with. Many businesses are advertising on Instagram for a number of reasons:

Simple to use: The app only allows a handful of options for what to post, this gives everyone fair game. There is no annoying spam or pop-up videos/links that usually drive consumers away. But rather it is the same square space that every user has. Allowing businesses to reach consumers in a relatable fashion that is not too overbearing.

Creative: Instagram allows businesses to visit their creative side and release content that is unique and specified for their brand.

Effective: Visual marketing is becoming increasingly popular as social media marketing continually grows. Consumers are preferring to gain information through sight, and Instagram does just that. If a company is able to draw a consumer in through their pictures and captions they have potential to gain more followers and ultimately customers.

Join in the Fun

Obviously if you’re a brand manager or brand marketer you need to stop what you are doing and set up an Instagram account. Right away for the future of the free world depends on it!

Ok, maybe not the entire free world and perhaps I am being a bit melodramatic. But the fact remains that consumers – more and more of them, are using Instagram, just as they are Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest. And if you’re not including Instagram as part of your social media strategies which should be part of your overall integrated marketing campaigns, you are missing out on a golden opportunity to move that needle.

From the conclusion of the Simply Measured study: ”For brands that continue to hold out and watch as their competition is engaging users and measuring results, 80 cmillion potential customers are being ignored.”